


Pretty Forward

by KrisseyCrystal (AisukuriMuStudio)



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Awkward Flirting, EMT Akira, Fluff, I mean as awkward as it gets when Ryuji's bleeding out in the ambulance and half-aware, M/M, that he's hitting on his v gorgeous EMT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 01:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11544795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AisukuriMuStudio/pseuds/KrisseyCrystal
Summary: “Hey,” the stranger spoke again and Ryuji hesitantly turned to him. The world swam in a funny way that felt like syrup and someone pressing with the edges of their palms against his temples. “Really, though. All flirting aside, sir, I still need your name.”Oh.“Sakamoto,” he murmured. “’m Sakamoto Ryuji.”His attendant exhaled long and slow. He reached back for a clipboard held by a magnet to the wall and jotted something down on it.“’N you…?” Ryuji asked as the world got fuzzy.There it was again—that smile. Ryuji would say it did things to him but at the moment he couldn’t quite feel anything in his body, so. He just watched, entranced, maybe, as the stranger murmured, “Stay alive, and maybe you’ll find out.”





	Pretty Forward

In retrospect, Ryuji Sakamoto knew he shouldn’t have played with fate. As fast as a runner he was, there was no way he could have pushed both the girl and himself out of the way of that car. If he had given himself a second more to think, maybe he could have come up with another plan, or some other way to save both himself and the little girl that sedan had been careening for so blindly.

As it was, lying sprawled out and bleeding in the middle of the street wasn’t exactly the way the star track runner had always imagined he would go.

_Well,_ he thought to himself. _Shit._

The sky from where he was laying was blue, at least.

Maybe that was one thing to be grateful for, he mildly noted. Ryuji blinked slow as there were concerned shouts and gasps. Screeches of tires and a shout of, “Someone! Call an ambulance!” After all, if he died right there in that exact spot, at least he could go knowing that until the end, he had always kept lookin’ up.

…or something equally shitty and cliché like that.

Ryuji breathed and blinked again. Time seemed to pass oddly. People were both in front of him and not, fazing in and out of his awareness. One minute, a dark-haired woman was there, looking down at him with fear in her eyes. The next, she was nowhere to be seen and he could see the sky, unobstructed again.

When he blinked a third time, there were hands on him.

Ryuji didn’t know what to make of this change. He groaned as the hands tightened on his form and lifted him. Someone yelled something about bandages. Internal bleeding? Then they placed him on something soft. Wrapped else something around him that wasn’t as soft; actually it was kind of scratchy.

But whatever. He got a glimpse of white on the two people as they lifted him into the back of a box, so y’know. They were probably paramedics.

Probably.

“Hey.” There was a loud, echoing snap in front of his eyes and Ryuji blinked hard, wincing. A hand pulled away from his face, replaced by a bespectacled young man. He couldn’t have been too much older than Ryuji himself. He had eyes like smoke. “Talk to me. I need you to tell me your name.”

Oh.

Ryuji slowly grinned; it felt stretched on his face like latex. He probably looked dumb as shit. The box they were in rumbled. For some reason, it sounded like a cat. “Wow, doc. You’re bein’ pretty forward.”

The smoke-eyes blinked. “…excuse me?”

“Askin’ for my name ‘n all. We’ve only just met.”

“Oh.”

The young man’s hand reached up—the same one that snapped in front of his face—and adjusted the glasses on his face. Was that a smile? It was small and sly. Cute. “Okay,” the young man said slowly. “Maybe Dr. Takemi should have let _me_ drive the ambulance.”

Dr. Takemi. Ryuji made a small grunt as the young man turned to fiddle with something on the side. “You old enough to drive an ambulance?” Uh—no—wait—eff that— “Hell, you old enough to be a doc?”

“I’m old enough to know how to keep you alive,” came the amused response and Ryuji supposed that was fair.

He tried to shift on the mat—what were those things called? Stretchers?—they had him on, but pain flared up starting from his right leg and his gut like one of those opera songs Mom would put on when she got in the shower, so he stopped.

Plus the black-haired guy looked pretty pissed when he did that.

Change of focus. “Dr. Takemi…that a girl or a guy?”

“Um.” The guy had nice, curly black hair that bobbed a little with his head when he laughed. That was cute, too. “Why are you asking?”

“If they’re a girl, then yes. Guy, then maybe.”

The stranger saving his life looked to the side as if that was where he could find where Ryuji’s train of thought suddenly was. Who knew, maybe it was. “The—the thing. You said,” he supplied when it was apparent the young man still didn’t know what he was talking about. “About them letting you drive the ambulance.”

“Oh.”

Ryuji’s stomach swam. He felt heat start to climb up his arms, his chest. “I mean, not to say I’m not enjoying this—“

“—I’d be worried if you were—“

“—but like.” Hm. Ryuji didn’t know where that thought process was going. He looked to the side, too. Maybe his lost train of thought could tell him its secrets. “I don’t know.”

Silence stretched between them for a beat.

Ryuji felt like he had to explain himself. “Girls are hot, man,” he confessed to the ceiling of the box.

The stranger just hummed so Ryuji turned to him. The nausea in his stomach built higher. “I mean, not to say _you_ aren’t hot. ‘Cuz you are.” He paused for a moment to breathe. Then he groaned, “I think I’m gonna throw-up.”

The dark-haired stranger moved quickly. “Yeah, okay—“

Ryuji had never vomited in front of anyone else before except for his mother.

It was strange, though, the way a complete stranger could make him feel so _soothed_ after it was all out of his system. The young man helped get him onto his side, wiped his mouth when he was done. He eased him back onto his back and gave him water to drink immediately, saying, “Keep hydrated. We’re almost there.”

Afterwards, silence stretched between them save for the purring of the ambulance.

Effin’ cats.

“Hey,” the stranger spoke again and Ryuji hesitantly turned to him. The world swam in a funny way that felt like syrup and someone pressing with the edges of their palms against his temples. “Really, though. All flirting aside, sir, I still need your name.”

Oh.

“Sakamoto,” he murmured. “’m Sakamoto Ryuji.”

His attendant exhaled long and slow. He reached back for a clipboard held by a magnet to the wall and jotted something down on it.

“’N you…?” Ryuji asked as the world got fuzzy.

There it was again—that smile. Ryuji would say it did things to him but at the moment he couldn’t quite feel anything in his body, so. He just watched, entranced, maybe, as the stranger murmured, “Stay alive, and maybe you’ll find out.”

Huh.

Ryuji smiled a little. It still felt strange on his face, or maybe it was just because his lips felt numb. “Thought that was your job, doc.”

“Yeah, well. It takes two to tango.”

Ryuji chuckled and blinked slow. The fuzzy quality of the world made it kind of hard to see. His head pounded. “Y’know, I like you.”

The world started to fade away.

“I think I like you, too, Sakamoto.”

* * *

 

The worst thing Ryuji discovered upon waking up was what had happened to his femur.

Broken.

One of the hardest bones to break, and he had gone and done it in a random afternoon because he just _had_ to try and be the hero. The doctors even had the nerve to tell him competitive running might not be in his future anymore because of the injury. “You were lucky we didn’t have to amputate it, kid.”

Ryuji thought it was too pretty a day outside—the sky was still so damn _blue_ —to really wrap his head around that.

The second worst thing Ryuji found upon waking up was his mother crying.

He hated making her cry.

The third, once he remembered, was that the cute nurse (paramedic, maybe? Ryuji didn’t know) that stayed with him in the back of the ambulance was nowhere to be seen. Apparently _nobody_ knew who he was talking about, either, whenever he tried to ask the nurses at the hospital about a “black-haired kid with glasses” who had a “nice laugh.” _Apparently_ that description fit too many people to be useful, but whatever. (One nurse even tried to offer, “Harry Potter?” to which Ryuji scoffed. No, neither Daniel Radcliffe nor Kenshō Ono had as nice of a laugh as that stranger did, thank you very much.)

Anyway, it wasn’t like Ryuji was really hoping to see him again, or anything.

The day came when he was finally allowed to be released from the in-patient wing of the hospital. Ryuji sat through all the scheduling his mother and him had to arrange for his physical therapy appointments, sat through even more paperwork to officially sign him out, and then—just when Mom had left to go and grab a wheelchair for him—that was when _he_ strolled on in.

The guy.

Curly black hair and glasses and stupid, small, cute smile and all, wearing an off-white cardigan over a black tee and jeans.

_Him._

Ryuji couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Hey,” the stranger had the gall to say.

Ryuji blinked.

The stranger flushed a little at his silence. A hand came up to twirl a loose lock of black hair like it was a nervous habit. “Sorry. You might not remember me.” He cleared his throat and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I would’ve brought flowers from the shop I part-time at, but the nurses told me you were leaving today.”

Ryuji sputtered. “ _Flower shop_? What happened to being a _doc_?”

“I’m an EMT, technically,” the stranger said with a smile. Clearly relieved Ryuji did indeed remember him. “Working on becoming a paramedic, but school costs money.”

Ryuji watched him for a moment. Entranced, again, for a reason he couldn’t name. “So. Here you are,” he said quietly.

The stranger shrugged. “Here I am.”

Silence drifted between them again.

“Kurusu Akira, by the way.”

Ryuji thought he misheard. He leaned forward a little bit, as much as he dared with the healing pain in his stomach and leg delicately suspended thanks to painkillers. “Sorry?”

“Kurusu Akira.” The guy who saved his life—and probably his leg, when Ryuji thought about it—repeated. “That’s my name. You lived, so I guess it’s your right to know.”

“You say that like you didn’t expect that to happen…”

The guy named Kurusu laughed. (Much better, Ryuji thought, than Daniel Radcliffe _or_ his voiceover, for the record.)

Ryuji scratched the back of his head. He tried not to flush.

He would like to make him laugh again. “Hey, so uh, listen Kurusu—“

“—you can call me Akira, you know.”

Ryuji tried not to blush. Wow. This guy was the _definition_ of pretty forward. “Okay. Akira.” _Good name,_ he thought. “Listen, I know I probably said a lot of weird shit while you were takin’ care of me, and my mom’s about to come back to help me get out of here. But if it’s cool with you, I mean, I wouldn’t mind seeing you again. Would you…wanna hang out sometime?”

Akira’s smiled brightened, and this time, it really did things to Ryuji. His heart did a pathetic flop against his ribcage.

“Sure. I think I’d like that, Sakamoto.”

“Ryuji.”

Another laugh. Just as great as the others.

“Okay. Sure, Ryuji.”

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to dailyau.tumblr.com for coming up with the prompt that started this whole thing:
> 
> “Will you stop flirting with me you just got seriously injured and i’m the EMT trying to tend to your wounds in the ambulance, i don’t give a fuck that i look cute when i’m concerned, you’re lucky you’re not dead you dipshit” AU
> 
> It's a nice AU.
> 
> Also, did you know that the actress who did the Japanese voiceover for Myrtle in HP is Chika Sakamoto, and the actor who did the Japanese voicover for Tom Riddle is Akira Ishida? Thought it was a nice tidbit.


End file.
